The Prize Farm of M. Dargeiit. 
17 
be?t-crop, 2500 hectolitres, weighs 150,000 kilogrammes ; in 
1857, they weighed 167,000, a fact recorded in a Report to the 
Society of Agriculture." * Until the disease came, M. Dargent 
grew 440 bushels of potatoes per acre. After trying many 
varieties of seed- wheat, French and English, he keeps to the red 
wheat, there called Scotch," finding that the straw, which is short, 
but stiff and strong, best resists the gales which are so formid- 
able at Saint-Leonard. In the rainy season of 1816 M. I^argent 
had the good fortune to save his crop (fielded till October), by 
being the first to set his sheaves in shocks, after the example of 
Madame Chevalier, his grandmother. 
Since 1815 he has grown beet, swedes, turnips {la rave (T AuvSrgne 
ct da Poitou), carrots ; but soon found that beet was best suited 
to his farm. To him the department was indebted for its first 
factory for beet-sugar set up at Fecamp in 1831, since he under- 
took to provide the principal supply of beet ; he introduced the 
trifolium incamatum — the use of lesser and larger cocks in hay- 
making — and in* 1832, " made improvements in the horse-hoe, 
similar to those introduced in the most complete modern English 
implement. 
M. Dargent has applied the same skill and judgment to his 
cider-orchard as to his farm ; discovering varieties of apples which 
escape the ravages of insects, he regrafted all his trees with 
those sorts. In planting young trees, he applies manure, but. 
only to the extremities of the roots. 
His dairy-cows, which since 1836 have had a judicious cross, 
of short-horn blood, are admirable. " It is difficult to find cows, 
with better - developed chests and ribs, more deep and more 
compact ; and yet one of them gives 30 quarts, her daughter 
24|^ quarts, and two others 23 and 22 quarts apiece ; while their 
condition shows how very easy it would, be to fatten them for the- 
butcher." From the first M. Dargent has picketed his cows, 
both in the orchard and on the layer. He sells his milk at 
Fecamp for a little more than Id. per quart, and considei's that, 
each cow gives him a clear yearly profit of 6Z. 
The flock at Saint- Leonard has long been famous ; in 1835, and 
again in 1843, reports on its merits were printed ; and the latter 
report gained for M. Dargent the Cross of the Legion of Honour. 
The stock — merino — was originally procured by M. Dargent's 
father from the Royal farm at Rambouillet, fell into the hands 
of his maternal uncle, and was brought back in 1811 ; since 
v/hich time it has been improved and maintained with the 
* This statement respecting the specific gravity of the mangold is one which the 
reporter says he -would not have ventured to make on a less authority than that 
referred to. Its significance depends on the hectolitre being more accurately 
measured than is commonly the case with our bushel. 
VOL. XXIV. " C 
